5 Designers that made an impact at Budapest Central European Fashion Week

For the 15th edition of Budapest Central European Fashion Week (BCEFW), the schedule, spanning February 10 to 16, brought together around 50 designers and brands from Hungary and surrounding regions in both shows and workshops, some open to the public. Those on the runways, held between the city’s Apollo Gallery and Millenáris Park, as well as special locations around Budapest, used the opportunity to unveil their autumn/winter 2025 collections. Here are some of the stand out collections for the week.

Mero

Péter Merő launched his namesake label Mero in 2014, starting out with the brand’s first showroom in Hungary before expanding into the international market. Mero has since found a place on red carpets around the world, donned by celebrities like Pamela Anderson, as well as fashion weeks in Milan, Dubai and Bangkok. For AW25, Merő leaned into his couture skills developed early in his brand’s lifecycle, while making an effort to preserve cultural heritage for a selection of limited edition dresses.

Szczygiel

Polish designer Ania Szczygiel launched her eponymous brand, Szczygiel, with a mission to align strongly with sustainable values to highlight the impact of overproduction. As such, the label only uses a limited number of fabrics, dead stocks and recycled materials from studios based in Cambridgeshire, England, for its collections, a process that worked its way into her AW25 line, featuring both menswear, womenswear and unisex looks. “Playful textiles, colour and fusion of different materials and patterns, crafting as well as upcycling creative reuse and process of transforming is what makes my collection,” she said in the show notes.

Ami Amalia

Romania designer Amalia Sǎftoiu blew BCEFW attendees away with a bright red collection of knitwear under the Ami Amalia brand. Sǎftoiu infused a 60’s essence into an array of knit techniques, with an intention to exhibit the extensive possibilities of what knitwear can do. The line extended on the values of the Ami Amalia label, which puts an emphasis on slow fashion and ensures respect for the people involved in the creation of each collection. Its concept has seemingly been received well, as while Sǎftoiu started the project in 2017, the designer has since opened a Bucharest flagship store for Ami Amalia in December 2024.

Jackob Buczynski

Akin to others on this list, Poland-based Jackob Buczynski favours sustainable processes for his own label, regularly putting out products created using upcycled and repurposed materials. This remained true for the collection he presented in Budapest, with secondhand materials, such as tulle, kilim and lace, forming the base of the 20-piece line, for which he drew inspiration from the livelihoods of Polish women. His concept, however, wished to depart from traditional values, and as such Buczynski acquired a selection of used wedding dresses, giving them a new life to celebrate the modern woman. To supply the rest of the materials, the designer turned to long-time partner Wtórpol, a Polish textile sorting plant he has worked alongside for several years, further underlining a commitment to challenging the pervasive overproduction of goods.

Zsigmond

Since its inception in 2014, Dóra Zsigmond utilised her eponymous brand, Zsigmond, as a platform through which she wished to preserve rural Hungarian heritage, while infusing modern design values into her pieces. It is exactly that which she carried into her collection, ‘Dark Horse’, where she commemorated rural figures of Hungary’s countryside in items that strongly referenced the world of local folklore. Each item was produced from materials sourced from certified European manufacturers, with some also selected from specialised collectors of historic, one-of-a-kind fabrics.